Independent Nasserist Movement

The Independent Nasserist Movement (INM), also known as the Independent Nasserite Organization (INO) or al-Mourabitoun, is a Sunni Muslim Nasserist political party in Lebanon, founded in 1957 by Ibrahim Kulaylat. The party blended socialism with secular Arab nationalism, and it was radically opposed to the Maronite dominance of Lebanese politics, with its goal being to create a secular Arab state of Lebanon with a socialist political and economic system. Its members were overwhelmingly Muslim, and it drew support from working-class and petit bourgeois Sunnis at the start of the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, its membership was 45% Sunni, 45% Shia, and 10% Druze, although other sources claimed that 40% of its members were Christians.

The INM's armed wing, al-Mourabitoun ("the Sentinels), was involved in fighting against the Lebanese government during the 1958 crisis, and it forged alliances with the Progressive Socialist Party, the Lebanese Communist Party, and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the mid-1970s. In 1975, it had just 200 militants, but this number grew to 3,000 men and women from the Muslim quarters of West Beirut at the height of the war. Its 1,000 regular fighters and 2,000 reservists were trained in camps by Fatah, the PFLP, and as-Sa'iqa, and it had armor, infantry, and artillery branches, uniforms, a rank-and-file of Druze, Sunnis, and Shi'ites, and an officer corps of Sunnis and Christians trained in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and Ba'athist Iraq, giving al-Mourabitoun a "regular" look.

The INM opposed the Syrian invasion of Lebanon in 1976, and many of the party's non-Sunni members deserted from its ranks due to its involvement in massacres such as the infamous Damour massacre. By 1982, it had 7,000 fighters in West Beirut, and the party was a part of the Lebanese National Movement until the LNM's collapse and the withdrawal of the PLO from South Lebanon. From 1983 to 1984, it fought against the Lebanese Forces in the Chouf District, but it allied with the PLO and other leftist groups against the PSP, LCP, and the Amal Movement during the 1985 War of the Camps. al-Mourabitoun was crushed after a week of heavy fighting, and its guerrilla remnants in West Beirut were brutally suppressed during 1987-1988 sweeps by the Syrian commandos and the Lebanese Army. In April 2001, the INM re-emerged as a political party, reopening offices in Beirut, Tripoli, Akkar, the Beqaa Valley, and Jabal Amel in 2006.